


he's mine

by DawnandStars



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Detective Comics (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Age Difference, Damian Wayne is Not Robin, Damian Wayne is an Assassin, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Gift Fic, Injury Recovery, League of Assassins Damian Wayne, M/M, Older Damian Wayne, Pet Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29509953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnandStars/pseuds/DawnandStars
Summary: Damian al Ghul is assigned a new target for his birthday, one Richard 'Dick' Grayson. He isn't expecting to grow attached to the man.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Damian Wayne
Comments: 3
Kudos: 58





	he's mine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CallmeB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallmeB/gifts).



> THIS IS SO GODDAMN LATE, BUT HAPPY BIRTHDAY AEDAN! I finally finished the damn thing, holy hell. I hope you like it! I'm also playing it safe with the rating and have no real idea how to tag this, but here we are.

Of _all_ the targets his mother could have assigned him for his twenty-first birthday, _he_ got stuck with a _gymnastics teacher._

There was nothing remotely interesting about that!

Damian sighed, waiting for a moment before grabbing the backpack at his feet, opening it up to pull out the folder containing different files of information about his target.

Richard “Dick” Grayson, roughly early to mid-thirties. Used to be part of a circus before his parents were murdered and then was taken in by Bruce Wayne to live in Gotham. Bruce Wayne, huh? Why did that name sound familiar to him? He’d ask his mother about it when he landed in Blüdhaven, which was where Grayson had moved and opened his gymnastics studio. Granted, he probably wouldn’t have time, and his mother would simply answer with a question of her own.

Damian skimmed the rest of the pages. Single, no children, but kept contact with a few people (Wayne in particular). Spent every other weekend in Gotham, which must feel like a nice break, since this man ran his own business and all.

Strange though. His papers on Gotham and Blüdhaven stated that both cities were some of the worst in America when it came to crimes, that they had masked vigilantes who would patrol the streets at night to stop criminals, most superpowered, while others were just downright insane. Yet Grayson seemed to have no issues basically living in one or the other.

This meant he either wasn’t bothered by the madness or was part of the madness himself. Damian wasn’t sure which option was the most logical one, nor did he know if this was why he was listed as a target.

He’d strike tonight, make it quick and easy, no reason to linger for too long. After all, he had all the information necessary.

What could possibly go wrong?

***

Everything. Everything could go wrong.

First, the man wasn't even at the gymnastics studio where he lived and taught. Somehow, the bastard had left an _hour_ before his flight had landed, and since he didn't have a way to track him, Damian was stuck going from rooftop to rooftop in an attempt to find him on the streets below.

Next, he ended up getting caught in a scuffle with some of those masked lunatics that seemed to plague Blüdhaven. He fought them, yes, even avoided killing them to keep his trail unknown.

When he thought he had finally gotten a lock on Grayson, however, Damian found himself caught up in another scuffle. This time though, he had somehow been caught off guard.

The last thing he saw before tumbling into the alleyway below was a blur of black and blue.

***

Damian groaned, squinting his eyes open. He registered pain in his body, mainly from his arm and back. That fall must've knocked him out, except. . .

He didn't feel asphalt or gravel beneath him. He felt plush pillows and warm sheets on his bare torso. When he tried to move, everything ached, but it was dull.

Almost like he had been given some kind of numbing agent or even just basic pain medicine.

"Are you awake?" a voice suddenly asked, causing Damian to turn on his side once his eyes had adjusted to the lighting.

Standing there by the bed was Grayson, and, dare he allow the thought, Damian felt that his photographs from the files given to him did this man no justice. He swallowed the lump he suddenly felt forming in his throat, forcing himself to sit up.

Only for Grayson to gently push him back down against the plush pillows and sheets.

“No, no, you stay right there. You had a really bad fall, according to the guy who brought you here.” His hands felt calloused, possibly because he was a gymnast. Yet if Damian looked closely at his slightly tanned skin, he could make out thin little lines on his hands and several larger ones along his arms, clearly standing out.

Scars. Why did a gymnastics instructor have _scars?_ That made absolutely _no sense_ to Damian. Was he just a very clumsy man then? No, no, he was a gymnast! And the scars. . . They looked _old,_ like he got them years ago.

“Sorry to be a bother. I’m. . . Not even sure what happened to me,” Damian lied. No, he knew what had happened to him, but he couldn’t just casually reveal that he was an assassin sent to kill Grayson, now could he?

He would wait, maybe get the man to trust him a bit. Slitting his throat would be so much easier then, a swift kill that even his mother would be proud of.

“Bad fall. Sounded like you got caught up in a fight between some of the street gangs nearby,” Grayson said, moving to sit on the edge of the mattress now. “A. . . Friend brought you in. Told me to look after you and make sure you were okay. I mean, he could have brought you to the hospital, but my place was closer and I have medical knowledge, so-”

Damian raised a brow at that. Medical knowledge? Clearly more than a simple bandaid, because the way he was patched up. . . Well, it wasn’t perfect, but it definitely was more than he would expect from a gymnastics instructor.

“Thank you, you really didn’t have to do that,” Damian replied, still managing to sit up despite the other one’s protests to stay laying down. He had suffered far worse injuries than what he currently felt after all. He doubted that Grayson would understand, and yet. . . Now he had more questions about the man. Questions that the files his mother had given him would _not_ hold the answers to.

Which meant he was going to end up sticking around Blüdhaven for a bit. While a swift kill would be best, Damian _hated_ leaving questions unanswered.

“Honestly, it was no problem, I was more than happy to help,” Grayson said, giving him a charming smile that probably worked wonders on people who would be interested in the gymnast.

Honestly. . . It made him look more attractive than Damian was willing to admit to himself. The scars were a nice touch, too. No, stop that, he shouldn’t be finding his assassination target _attractive!_ He needed to have no reason to form an attachment with him, to make the kill easier.

He learned that lesson early on when he was seven and given his first target his best friend.

“I’ll do my best to recover so I can get out of your hair sooner,” Damian promised, already knowing that he could probably spring up from this bed easily and only feel hints of pain, so long as he put his mind to it. It was just his arm and back that seemed to have suffered the worst of it, so if he just kept that in mind then-

“No, you stay for as long as you need. Believe me, your injuries weren’t pretty. And you staying here will be no problem,” Grayson said, once more moving to push him down. It was then that Damian noticed the pain medicine and glass of water by the bedside table, along with a tray of what could only be a plate of breakfast and a mug of tea.

“Is. . . Is that all for me?” he asked, clearly confused, sitting up one final time and seeing that Grayson was giving up with trying to get him to lay back down.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I figured I’d make you something to eat when you got up, but. . . I don’t even know what you’d want to eat,” he said, laughing as he scratched his cheek. He set the tray up for Damian, and the young assassin could see that the meal for him was a small stack of pancakes, some scrambled eggs, and two slices of buttered toast. The tea smelled like it was an earl grey blend.

Here he was, in the home and bed of his target, and his target was _feeding him breakfast._ He honestly couldn’t _wait_ to see the look of shock in Grayson’s gorgeous blue eyes when he finally took his life. And yet. . . He felt his heart skip a beat at the same time. Perhaps staying here and gathering more information while he recovered wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

“Thank you, mister. . . ?” Damian trailed off on purpose, as if he didn’t know Grayson’s name.

“Dick Grayson,” the gymnast instructor said, giving Damian another smile. “And you?”

“Damian Kane.”

***

He ended up staying for nearly _two weeks_ at Grayson’s home, recovering from his injuries, while also getting to know the city of Blüdhaven. In doing so, he began to learn more about Grayson.

Sure, some of it was what he already knew. Parents murdered, taken in by Bruce Wayne, apparently traveled the world for a time with friends before settling down in Blüdhaven which. . . Damian found odd, if only because he didn’t talk much about these friends and spoke of some as if they were no longer among the living.

Perhaps he was reading too much into this. And he was wasting time anyway, but. . .

Dammit. He was becoming _attached_ to this man, as much as he hated it.

Grayson would be up before him sometimes and always have breakfast ready. He learned quickly to look into recipes that were vegetarian friendly to accommodate Damian’s own eating style, and he was just so. . . So damn _caring._ It was almost infuriating, Damian thought, how caring he was to a literal stranger that he had only spent the last two weeks with.

And while Grayson seemed to avoid spilling too much about his life, Damian was even more closed off, coming up with lies that Grayson appeared to buy without an issue. Honestly, the man seemed like a bit of an idiot, if Damian had to guess his intelligence level.

It all really came to a head though when Damian was sitting up in his bed, sipping on some tea that Grayson had brought him earlier and listening to the man talk about one of his students and Damian realized. . . That he just couldn’t kill him. Why?

Grayson had apparently been calling him ‘babe’ for the last half hour and Damian never once stopped him. And, when he thought about it, the man had been calling him babe for _at least_ two days now. In fact, he could have easily killed him at some point during the two weeks that he had just been ‘healing’ and made it swift and painless.

Instead, he had been ignoring his mother and giving her false reports. Though he did wonder if the woman realized that they were false, as he recalled her amused laugh during their last call when he claimed that he was tearing down Grayson’s barriers.

“By the way, Damian,” Richard Grayson said, cutting through the al Ghul’s thought process. “Why did you lie to me about your surname?”

Damian blinked, gawking at the man like a deer in the headlights. “I. . . Excuse me? Lied to you? Richard, I’ve never lied to you, I-”

“Damian Kane doesn’t exist, but Damian al Ghul does. I know I come off stupid, but I’m not an idiot.” Richard (yes, Richard, there was no reason to refer to him by his surname anymore) sounded amused, and Damian could hear the smile in the man’s voice. “You were sent here to kill me, weren’t you? That’s why you got hurt that very first night you arrived in the city.”

“. . . I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Damian finally said, tightening his grip on his cup. “I swear, I’m not-”

“An assassin sent by the League of Assassins to kill me? They did know who you were going up against, right? At least, your mother and grandfather should have known.” He paused, suddenly snapping his fingers. “Oh! They wanted you to find out who I am, right?”

Damian could only stare at him, unable to believe anything he was hearing. Had he really been found out so easily? But how?!

The tea went clattering to the ground, the cup cracking but not breaking, Damian launching from the bed to pin Richard to the floor. He held a small blade to the older man’s throat, his teeth bared.

“How do you know all of this?!” he demanded, pressing the blade to his throat, like he was still intending to kill him once he obtained the information. How long had Richard known the truth though? Why did he deem it necessary to tell him now?

“Okay, we definitely got off on the wrong foot,” Richard chuckled. “Hi, I’m Richard Grayson, call me Dick. I’m a gymnastics teacher by day. . . And I’m Nightwing by night. Okay, that sounds really lame.”

How. . . How had Damian not connected those dots? The nights where Richard would be late returning home, the constant calls to Bruce Wayne. . . Hell, Richard hadn’t even visited Gotham since he had first woken up in Richard’s home! Had he just hidden it that well? Had Damian not been asking the right questions?

No. The answer had been in front of him the entire time, he had just willingly blinded himself to it. He didn’t want to admit to himself that this somewhat dumb, handsome man currently beneath him was assigned to him as a target due to his status as _Nightwing._ But that had to be the reason why right?

It would explain why Richard bounced between two of the most dangerous cities in the United States and never opted to move somewhere much calmer (though, really, _where_ could one find a calm city in this day and age?)

“Dami? You good there?” Richard said, pulling Damian out of his thoughts and back to the present. He held a look of amused confusion when Damian smirked down at him, the blade coming up and away from his throat to be tossed aside.

Damian buried his hands in Richard’s hair as he surged forward, crushing his lips against the acrobat’s in a desperate kiss. He would never tell Richard that this was his first kiss (though the older male could probably guess from how sloppy this entire thing was.) He only pulled back when it was clear that they both needed air, their cheeks flushed and Richard’s lips still so enticing.

Damian nearly closed the distance between them again, but the sound of his phone ringing interrupted him. The assassin groaned, and he climbed off of Richard to go and answer the call. “Damian al Ghul speaking.”

 _“I see that your target is still alive,”_ came his mother’s amused voice, making it clear that she was smiling. _“Surely you don’t need any help getting rid of him?”_

“Why do I now get the feeling, Mother, that you never intended for me to end his life?” Damian questioned, arching a brow as if she could see him. Her laugh was enough of an answer for him, bringing a smirk to his own features.

_“That’s my boy. He’s still your present, so you can do as you wish with him.”_

He glanced over his shoulder to look at Richard, watching the older male get to his feet. His smirk turned into a gentle smile. Oh, he knew _exactly_ what to do with Richard.

“He’s _mine_ ,” Damian said, chuckling under his breath. “And no one else can have him.” He ended the call before his mother could respond, setting his phone aside before approaching Richard again. He dragged him down into a kiss, listening to the older male moan against his mouth before leading him to the bed.

Yes, Richard Grayson was his. He’d make sure _everyone_ knew it, too.


End file.
